Bnei Yisrael had trouble hearing from Moshe that they would ever get out of Egypt. Slavery was all they had known for generations, and the Torah says, “their spirits were crushed.” Thankfully, our students had relatively little in their lives to compare crushed spirits to, so we did a demonstration with two small apples.
Before the students arrived, we had taken one apple and dropped it on the table and floor a number of times. From the outside, it was indistinguishable from the other apple. We asked the students to compare the two apples– they told us one had a green spot, while the other was entirely red, one had a stem and the other did not, one was slightly larger. They were correct on all those comparisons. But there was something they couldn’t see yet.
Then we cut both apples in half and asked them to compare the insides. Our students collectively gasped when they saw how different the insides of these apples were. They quickly understood that one had a rougher life than the other. We pointed out that even though they looked the same on the outside, something had happened on the outside to one of them that had affected them on the inside.
Before we jumped into that day’s text, we asked our students to watch out for who in the story might have had something happen to them that affected them inside, in a lasting way.
This is the conversation that followed:
Why can’t the slaves listen to Moshe?
They were promised freedom, and instead they got harder work after the first time Moshe went to Pharoah to say, “Let my people go!”
Their spirits were crushed—their hopes and dreams were lost, they gave up and didn’t want to go on, they saw no way for life to be better.
Why can’t they be free if their spirits are crushed?
They won’t be happy ever again, so they can’t be free. Being free means at least the possibility of being happy.
It’s like they were locked in a cage of sadness. Even if they don’t have to work as slaves, they just couldn’t see outside the cage.
What can we do when someone feels stuck?
If you are someone the persons already trusts, you can listen to where they are and try to help. If you’re not already someone the person trusts, try and find someone they do trust to help them.
Cheer them up—help them imagine other places, opportunities, and maybe even being happy.
